Steve Jobs on programming, craftsmanship, software, and the Web

We highlight some notable quotes from Steve Jobs in "The Lost Interview."

Jobs considers the impact his ouster from Apple had on his feelings in 1985. "I hired the wrong guy. [John Sculley] destroyed everything I spent 10 years working for."

In 1995, Steve Jobs gave a rare interview to Robert Cringely for a PBS special called Triumph of the Nerds to talk about the genesis of the personal computer. Most of the hour-long interview had been cut down to a few minutes to use for the three-part special, and the original master tape was thought to have been lost after production. Shortly after Jobs' death in October 2011, however, director Paul Sen found a VHS copy of the entire interview in his garage. Cringely and Sen worked to clean up the footage and presented "The Lost Interview" in a handful of art house theaters across the country. Magnolia Pictures eventually picked up the remastered footage for wider release, and made it available via iTunes and Amazon Video on Demand this week.

During the interview, Jobs was "at his charismatic best—witty, outspoken, visionary," according to Cringely. Jobs certainly wasn't pulling any punches, blaming Apple's poor performance in the mid-'90s on then-CEO John Sculley's mismanagement, the mediocrity of computing on Microsoft's lack of taste, and a glut of poorly designed consumer gadgets on companies overrun by "sales and marketing people."

To place the interview in context, it was taken about a year or so before Apple bought NeXT for its NextStep operating system, which became the basis for Mac OS X and later iOS. The acquisition also brought its estranged co-founder back to lead the company from near-bankruptcy to soaring profits and market share, with Apple becoming a leader in portable music players, notebook computers, smartphones, and tablets.

Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview Trailer

We watched the interview after it was posted to iTunes this week, and some readers wanted to know what kinds of things were included in the release. So here are a few of our favorite quotes and quips from the interview:

On the importance of the computer as a tool for advancing human abilities: A Scientific American article Jobs had read compared the efficiency of various animal species in terms of kilocalories expended per kilometer of movement. Humans ranked about a third of the way down the list when walking, but far exceeded any other animal when using a bicycle. "Humans are tool builders, and we build tools that can dramatically amplify our innate human abilities," Jobs said. "I believe that the computer will rank near, if not at the top, as history unfolds—it is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented."

On the importance of computer programming to cognitive ability: Jobs was asked what practical purpose he and other early Apple employees envisioned for programming personal computers. "It didn't have to do with using them for anything practical; we used it as a way to mirror our thought process. I think everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think. I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do."

On the importance of having good product people running the company: "When you have a market monopoly, the sales and marketing people end up running the company. The product people get run out of the company. Then the companies forget what it means to make great products. The [researchers] at Xerox PARC used to call the people who ran Xerox 'toner heads.' They just had no clue about a computer or what it could do."

On the importance of craftsmanship: "One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I've seen other people get it, too—it's the disease of thinking that a having a great idea is really 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell people, 'here's this great idea,' then of course they can go off and make it happen. The problem with that is that there's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a having a great idea and having a great product."

On the importance of software to the computer industry from 1995 on: "There hasn't really been a revolution in how we created software, at least not in the last 20 years. [But] software is infiltrating everything we do these days. Software is going to be a major enabler in our society."

On the importance of the Web: "It's really sort of the realization of our original dream, that the computer would not be a machine for computation, but would be metamorphosed into a tool for communication. And with the Web, that's finally happening. I think the Web is going to be profound in what it does to our society. The Web is going to be the defining technology, the defining social moment for computing."

On the importance of taste: "The way that we're going to ratchet up our species is to take the best [stuff], and spread it around to everybody, so everybody grows up with better things... If we can nudge [the computer] in the right direction, it will be a much better thing as it progresses. I think we've had a chance to do that a few times." And how do you know the right direction to nudge it? "Ultimately, it comes down to taste."

Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview is available for streaming to Apple TV or watching on iOS devices via iTunes as well as Amazon Video on Demand. A DVD release is planned, but there are still a limited number of theatrical runs in the US throughout July and August.

Promoted Comments

"I think everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think."

Programming does force you to figure out precisely what you are trying to do. That specificity and clarity is very valuable. It's not the only way to think but it is a valuable and useful one, that more people should know.

It doesn't have to be anything advanced. Even driving the turtle around in Logo is a good learning exercise.

The beatification of Jobs continues. Where would our insignificant computing lives be without him? The entire computing world depended on his genius. After all, he is the man who decided that every office and home should have a PC, then had the balls to pull it off...

I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do.

Figures that he would consider it art, as he never struck me as the engineer type (that would be Woz).

I think Jobs probably knew more about engineering than you know about the Liberal Arts. Take a few minutes to educate yourself. Wikipedia isn't a bad place to start.

Tiny Spoiler: the liberal arts include mathematics, the sciences and philosophy (including logic).

Maybe so in theory, but in practical terms if one study math one say so. Same with some branch of Science (never mind the Science of math). When i encounter "liberal arts" these days it seems to always imply some kind of social or historical topic (often with a heavy focus on the art side).

One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I've seen other people get it, too—it's the disease of thinking that a having a great idea is really 90 percent of the work.

Well, this at least absolutely still rings very true, particularly (and ironically) amongst posters in tech-oriented forums. I still see a lot of people on Ars who think that "ideas" are generally central and important. Ideas are way, way overvalued vs engineering. Of course, Jobs himself either slipped there over time or never really made the connection, because he should have joined in opposing software patents.

Lemurs wrote:

The beatification of Jobs continues. Where would our insignificant computing lives be without him? The entire computing world depended on his genius. After all, he is the man who decided that every office and home should have a PC, then had the balls to pull it off...

The demonization of Jobs continues as well eh? Curse Ars for forcing each and every weekend post about it down your throat, at gunpoint! We must straw-man ever harder to hold back the imaginary hordes!

It's a great interview and worth watching. We do see a bit more of Jobs than we did before.

The stuff about Xerox, is especially interesting. He admits thats were they got the gui, the object orientated programming ideas from, he also says that Xerox just didn't do anything with them, they blew their chance.

I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do.

Figures that he would consider it art, as he never struck me as the engineer type (that would be Woz).

Speaking as a comp sci major and software engineer, he's sorta right. Compared to most other engineering fields, where there is often a definite 'right' solution for a problem, programming is a very creative process.

"I think everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think."

Programming does force you to figure out precisely what you are trying to do. That specificity and clarity is very valuable. It's not the only way to think but it is a valuable and useful one, that more people should know.

It doesn't have to be anything advanced. Even driving the turtle around in Logo is a good learning exercise.

I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do.

Figures that he would consider it art, as he never struck me as the engineer type (that would be Woz).

I think Jobs probably knew more about engineering than you know about the Liberal Arts. Take a few minutes to educate yourself. Wikipedia isn't a bad place to start.

Tiny Spoiler: the liberal arts include mathematics, the sciences and philosophy (including logic).

Maybe so in theory, but in practical terms if one study math one say so. Same with some branch of Science (never mind the Science of math). When i encounter "liberal arts" these days it seems to always imply some kind of social or historical topic (often with a heavy focus on the art side).

A good programmer will consider a lot of what they do to be "art" because in contrast to engineering like mechanical engineering or electrical engineering, when writing code it's very hard to objectively evaluate it quantitatively. That's because a lot about what makes code good or bad isn't apparent until somebody goes back to extend it years later (if it was good enough to even be used that long), or the number of subtle and hidden bugs gets exposed over time. A couple of years ago there was a highly influential essay by Paul Graham called Hackers and Painters that explored this a bit, and though I personally have lots of complaints about the essay, it captures how most programmers feel, I believe, and it of course captures the opinion of its author, who is most certainly one of the most influential programmer-entrepeneurs in Silicon Valley right now.

Though programming wasn't his primary activity, managing programmers was, Jobs was very astute when it came to understanding programming. He realized the huge variance in skill, where a good programmer is 10x more productive than an average one, because he was exposed to Woz early on. He understood that it's like building a very tall building, and that the stronger the foundational layers, the taller the building can be before it collapses under its weight. He would debate Eric Schmidt on object-oriented programming so convincingly that Eric Schmidt would begin to doubt himself in the are of his own PhD research. You don't have to like Steve Jobs, but you do have to understand that he was in tech for his entire life starting from calling up the P in HP as a child to get parts, to working at Atari, and that there's no successful technology company that was founded by somebody that didn't understand programming. Even Larry Ellison, Oracle's CEO, was a programmer, supposedly "good" but not "great." The Sculley era proved that it takes more than marketing, generic management, and advertising to run a tech company.

I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do.

Figures that he would consider it art, as he never struck me as the engineer type (that would be Woz).

I think Jobs probably knew more about engineering than you know about the Liberal Arts. Take a few minutes to educate yourself. Wikipedia isn't a bad place to start.

Tiny Spoiler: the liberal arts include mathematics, the sciences and philosophy (including logic).

Maybe so in theory, but in practical terms if one study math one say so. Same with some branch of Science (never mind the Science of math). When i encounter "liberal arts" these days it seems to always imply some kind of social or historical topic (often with a heavy focus on the art side).

As someone who has a Bachelor of Arts I could never work out how Philosophy was throw into the Arts department. I completed a double major in Religious Studies and Philosophy, and to be perfectly frank it always seemed that for example the history department was occupying some parallel universe when compared to the critical methods employed by the Religious Studies and Philosophy Departments.

I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do.

Figures that he would consider it art, as he never struck me as the engineer type (that would be Woz).

Speaking as a comp sci major and software engineer, he's sorta right. Compared to most other engineering fields, where there is often a definite 'right' solution for a problem, programming is a very creative process.

Strongly disagree on "most other engineering fields". In my field (flight control) the line that separates the adequate from the really good is the ability to come up with the elegant (in the mathematical sense) solution to a problem, starting from the foundations of existing art in the field. There are no cookie cutter solutions; each aircraft is unique (that's a whole 'nother story) and to a significant degree needs a unique solution.

The same is true in every branch of engineering of which I'm aware, even things as seemingly cut-and-dried as building structural engineering; if you look deep enough, there's art aplenty.

It gets under my skin so much when arrogant people talk about 'taste'. Yeah, because that's a perfectly non-vague and objective thing.

The thing is that even though taste is hard or nearly impossible to quantify, most people recognize good taste when they experience it: BMW vs. KIA, nice and perfectly fit clothes vs. not so nice and sloppy clothes...

I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do.

Figures that he would consider it art, as he never struck me as the engineer type (that would be Woz).

I thought the same thing. I can't say I value his opinion on programming too highly. Now his on opinions on innovation are a different story.

How is art different? Do you not learn to understand color, shapes, composition and light to learn to paint? Do you not learn notes, chords, tonality to understand music and be able to "make it work" when you create it?

Sounds more like he knew more about programming than a lot of other people do. Creating art is about as much "magic talent and inspiration" as programming is. It’s just easier to say "Ooooh, that girl has such natural talent with the violin." or "I wish I had those boys eyes for color, he can paint so well!" than to admit that these two put in fucking shitloads of time learning, researching and understanding their craft.

Man, I wish I has Torvalds’ natural talent for programming, it would be freaking cool to being able to hack on operating system kernels… I just don’t have the brain for it! *le sigh*

Relax. Some people have better aesthetic taste than others. Heck, a friend of mine can't even match his socks not to mention grasp the concepts of complementary colors. Taste and fashion also change (see avocado-colored appliances from the 70s) but ugly at inception is usually ugly for keeps. Jobs was very good at "taste" as evidenced by his success. The market picked a winner in this regard.

I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do.

Figures that he would consider it art, as he never struck me as the engineer type (that would be Woz).

I don't think you understand what the "liberal arts" are.

It does not literally mean "liberal" + "art". In fact, it's an acedemic term that is not specific to the "arts".

I believe Steve use this to reference the "humanties"... which do include visual and performing arts amongst many other academic disciplines.

"The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences." - Wikipedia

"The liberal arts (Latin: artes liberales) are those subjects that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects (called the Trivium) were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy (which included the study of astrology)." - Wikipedia

"In modern times liberal arts is a term which can be interpreted in different ways. It can refer to certain areas of literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, psychology, and science." - Wikipedia

"For example, Harvard University offers a Master of Liberal Arts degree, which covers biological and social sciences as well as the humanities." - Wikipedia